Grace In Addiction: AA on Weakness and Spiritual Growth

Two more small excerpts from our recent publication Grace In Addiction: What The Church Can Learn From Alcoholics Anonymous. To order your copy, go here. And for two more previews go here and here:

The first of the Twelve Steps requires the “admission of powerlessness”; the addict cannot gain access to sobriety without traveling through that ugly door. To quote Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, “The principle that we shall find no enduring strength until we first admit complete defeat is the main taproot from which our society has sprung and flowered” (p. 22). In a practical sense, this means that the addict who is not in a state of despair about his or her plight needs to be made to feel worse if they are ever to find lasting sobriety. It is sometimes said in AA that “a person doesn’t attend AA in order to stay sober; they attend in order to remember that they are drunks.”

In theological terms, this tells us something about God: He is a God who meets people in their weakness, not their strength. He is a God who saves people from themselves. Rescue is the thrust of the Bible and the heart of the Christian Gospel. Sadly, this simple catch-22 – that the only way you can find God is if you desperately need Him – stands in direct opposition to the widespread, even dominant notion in today’s churches that spiritual life finds its origin in decision-making/virtuous intention/choosing God. There is some talk in churches of God as redeemer, but there is also an enormous amount of talk of God as teacher, friend, inspiration, coach, etc. In AA there is only one thing: God is who you need to save you. And if you do not find him, you are in serious trouble – in exactly the way St. Paul talks about or the way the jaywalking example illustrates.

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AA rejects the notion that spiritual growth is ever ultimately fueled by virtue, insisting that all sanctification is born out of continued need. A classic line from the Twelve & Twelve posits: “Pain [is] the touchstone of all spiritual progress” (p. 93-94). In sobriety, attention is always focused on those areas where holiness seems to be lacking, whereas little to no attention is paid to perceived progress. The need for help also creates and fosters the desire to pray. Without struggle, the believer would never need to pray, but with continued weakness, there always remains an open channel of prayer and trust in God as the deliverer and counselor.

Because the struggles of life remain essentially the same for the sober and drinking alcoholic, there is little stratification between the members of a recovery group; both the 25-year sober drunk and the 5-day sober drunk need the same thing, which is the gift of sobriety, God’s gracious gift of reprieval. It is often said in AA that the sober alcoholic who wakes up first on any given day has the most sobriety of anyone in the program.

Consequently, the addict believes there is no distinction to be drawn between the message that should be given to newcomers (in Christian terms, non-believers and new converts), and mature AAs (members of church leadership and stalwart long-term adherents of the faith). The church that believes its Gospel message applies exactly the same way to both newcomer and aging saint alike is a rare bird indeed. In AA the same gospel that saves a drunk can also do the miraculous trick of sanctifying him (i.e., keeping him saved), no matter how long he has been coming. The same message that gets you in, also keeps you in. To put it a different way, spiritual growth is understood to be cyclical rather than linear: it is a constant return to the beginning instead of a clear progress from A to B.

12 comments

The first photo is of the Jesse Pinkman character on the tv show Breaking Bad, who is newly sober and embodies much of what is described in the post.

The second one was supposed to be a bit more light-hearted: substance-abuse trainwreck Gary Busey and celebrity-shrink/svengali Dr Drew, who I believed helped Gary in one of those celebrity rehab shows. Little help, JDK?

Powerful stuff. I listened to the NY conference talk/discussion on this subject, really appreciated all of that, especially the girl who spoke first. So interesting that we meet God in our helplessness…such a different concept from what surrounds us. I have not watched Breaking Bad, but have heard Cranston interviewed and thought it would show up on this blog:)

Well, I don't know about that last thing. The fact is that lots of people with long-term sobriety stop attending A.A. eventually; the ratio of newcomers to 25-year-vets at any meeting is actually quite high.

There is spiritual growth, even linearly, and it's talked about in the Big Book and in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. In fact, I suspect that the reason that the founders of A.A. encouraged a return to the faith of one's pre-addiction days (or to a new worship life, for those who weren't religious) is because A.A. is truly very focused on newcomers (as it should be). So actually the hierarchy may be reversed; early on, I often heard the phrase "the newcomer is the most important person in the room."

The message is, at bottom, "don't take a drink today." And that is very simple indeed, and does apply to both newcomer and veteran alike. But we are meant to move on from the beginning, and to take on more challenges – which does in fact require a deeper spiritual life. The difference between drunkenness and sobriety is extreme, so progress is in fact possible and the whole point.

The key, actually, is that we become deeply aware of how different life is today from the way it used to be – and that we could lose it all at any time. When you return from the dead, you become aware of a lot of things – but you do have to return in order to "get your brains out of hock."

Still, I agree that the focus is on places of continued weakness – and that, I agree, is a place where the church could learn a lot. But it's not because there's not progress; it's because addiction is deadly and people recognize that spiritual progress must be made in order to avoid returning to active alcoholism.

I'm not trying to fight with you; I'm just trying to figure it all out myself, by making these kinds of distinctions. What actually should the church be aiming at? You're asking really good questions.

(I think maybe the key to "staying humble" – i.e., teachable – in A.A. is simply remembering how sick and crazy we once were. That our own wills got us nowhere but to our seat in the rooms of A.A. – and that humility itself is the focus of Step 7.

Now: how to translate all that to what the Church teaches, and in a society like ours? That's the real trick; I've been thinking about it for years now….)

Welcome to Mockingbird! Thanks for the comments! A couple of things I think of – – I think AA like the church has a core or 'historic' theology that can easily get misconstrued in meetings. That has certainly been my experience living in NYC for 12 years.

I think at the core the AA message isn't so much don't drink and go to meetings, rather, "You have no power and need God' – e.g. you can't save yourself. I think in some respects the don't drink and go to meetings is another inward (or self-directed) message that doesn't jive with what is presented in AA's main text the Big Book. I've never seen the don't drink and go to meetings in any aa literature, but what I do see is a constant hammering of the fact that we are the problems, "our problems we think arise out of our selves…selfishness, self-centeredness – this we think is the root of all our problems…our sobriety is contingent on the daily maintenance of our spiritual condition (as you noted – that we're total messes..) – What I LOVE about AA is that God is the protagonist or the agent of change NOT US – he removes our defects of Character, etc… If any solution is contingent on what I do – for me that's by definition BAD (not Good) news b/c I know I will ultimately FAIL!

A couple of thought off the cuff on Monday AM. Thanks again for the comments and WELCOME WELCOME to MBird! Email me offline if you want to correspond…Would love to connect.

This is quite interesting… although I don't agree with all of it. I wonder if it can be that different in AA as opposed to CoDA. Having never gone to any twelve step program other than CoDA, I can only speak for what I've seen – and although the message of "growth due to suffering" is mentioned, there is also a lot mentioned about progress as people begin to incorperate the twelve steps and strategies of the program in their daily lives.

I believe there is a greater afinity to spiritual growth in people who have suffered. If one has never been hungry, how much can one really appreciate food? It is a natural thing to appreciate what one has been longing for.

In every life there are going to be problems. I suppose by the interpretation I am understanding from your article, this means everyone will at some point have the opportunity to find their spirituality. Even so, I would not want to look at spirituality as something that is only for the afflicted.

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